40 George Square is a

tower block A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

, Scotland forming part of the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

. Until September 2020 the tower was named David Hume Tower (often abbreviated as DHT). The building contains lecture theatres, teaching spaces, offices, a café and a shop.

Name

The tower was originally named after the

Scottish Enlightenment The Scottish Enlightenment ( sco, Scots Enlichtenment, gd, Soillseachadh na h-Alba) was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century ...

philosopher

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...

, who was an alumnus of the university. In September 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the university announced that they would be renaming the tower to 40 George Square. The university stated that Hume's "comments on matters of race, though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today."

Background

The tower was built as part of a significant 1960s

redevelopment Redevelopment is any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses. It represents a process of land development uses to revitalize the physical, economic and social fabric of urban space. Description Variations on redevelopment include: ...

George Square George Square ( gd, Ceàrnag Sheòrais) is the principal civic square in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is one of six squares in the city centre, the others being Cathedral Square, St Andrew's Square, St Enoch Square, Royal Exchange ...

by the university, which saw the demolition of numerous Georgian terraced houses and tenements to make way for new university buildings. The redevelopments were opposed by community groups and organisations, such as the

Cockburn Association The Cockburn Association (Edinburgh's Civic Trust) is one of the world's oldest architectural conservation and urban planning monitoring organisations, founded in 1875. The Scottish judge Henry Cockburn (1779–1854) was a prominent campaigner t ...

and the Scottish Georgian Society. Other buildings constructed included the university's Main Library and

Appleton Tower Appleton Tower is a tower block in Edinburgh, Scotland, owned by the University of Edinburgh. History When the University developed the George Square area in the 1960s, a large swathe of Georgian Edinburgh was demolished, leading to accus ...

Design and construction

The building was designed for the university's Arts Faculty by the Scottish

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

architect Robert Matthew of Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall & Partners (RMJM), alongside the structural engineering firm Blyth & Blyth. The tower is , and 14 storeys high. To the rear of the tower there is a row of lecture theatres, which are joined to the tower via a lower ground floor. The lower ground floor, known as the Hub, includes a café and shop surrounding a central atrium. The structure of the tower is made from reinforced concrete with brick infill, and is clad with slabs of polished black slate and York sandstone. The block of lecture theatres is similarly made of reinforced concrete and clad in York sandstone. The construction took place from 1960 until 1963, and was carried out by the contractor firm Crudens. In 2006 Historic Scotland designated the building as

category A listed This is a list of Category A listed buildings in Scotland, which are among the listed buildings of the United Kingdom. For a fuller list, see the pages linked on List of listed buildings in Scotland. Key The organization of the lists in th ...

, the highest category, stating the building is "one of the key monuments of Scottish Modernism", the architecture is of a "very high standard of design and execution" and the materials to be of "exceptional quality"

Renovation

In 2014, the lower ground floor was renovated to create the DHT Hub, including teaching space, a café and a EUSA shop. The renovations cost £15 million and won the RICS Conservation Award, Scottish Design Awards commendation, and a GIA Awards commendation.

References

{{Authority control Buildings and structures of the University of Edinburgh Category A listed buildings in Edinburgh Listed educational buildings in Scotland